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My heart will always yearn for Africa, for the place of my birth, for Cape Town; the city I will always call home. There are many many days in which I have felt very homesick and wondered what my life would be like if I had never moved a whole continent away from my friends and family.

But that’s no way to live my life. I know that my life is now here, is in Australia and the move I have made is exactly where I should be.
Little did I know when I met my husband, 4 wonderful years ago in a little Clapham bar in London that I would end up this far from home and yet here I am. I had been living in London for a while and he had just arrived a few months before. We were both spending a few years travelling around and earning some lovely, lovely pounds. Neither of us were really interested in anything to serious and we both just enjoyed each others company and seeing sights and sounds together. For a short while we decided to go our separate ways.
I was devastated, I don’t think I had realised just how much fun I was having with him or the fact that he was such a wonderful person till he was gone. But obviously we ended up back together and after a year and a half of blissful happiness, he managed to make me even happier by asking me to marry him…. I said yes 😉

And as they say the rest is history, we got married in London and moved over to Australia soon after that. In 2013 we were given the great honour of having a baby and being parents to the sweetest little boy we could ever have asked for.

I’ve had to make Australia home, not only for myself but for my family too. Don’t get me wrong I do dearly love my new home and all the first world luxuries and safety it offers us. We are also very lucky to be living in a stunning part of Australia and very, very close to my husband’s family so this post is really not about me complaining. I have made some amazing friends and together with our family I really feel like I have found a spot for myself here with people I can love and cherish and who I know love me back.

But as I’m sure any South African expat can agree Africa will always be in my blood and will always be what comes to mind when people ask me where my home is. They say home is where the heart is… my heart will always be in Africa!

I cannot believe that we will be on the downhill road to the meeting our beautiful little monkey on Saturday. Yes that’s right we will be in our 3rd trimester on Saturday! It’s all going by so quickly and we have had so much on our plate lately that I haven’t even noticed how fast it’s all happening.

Hubby promised me we would go and buy the nursery paint tonight cause we have been so busy we keep putting it off so I am really excited to at least do one thing to the nursery so I don’t feel quite so unprepared.

Along with feeling super unprepared and way to busy for a pregnant lady who should be resting more we have had some great moments over the last few months. We moved into our beautiful new house, which I am loving decorating and making into a home. We went to an absolutely beautiful wedding in Melbourne and managed a small holiday while we were there before Monkey arrives. I celebrated my 29th birthday with some awesome friends and family and was thoroughly spoilt and loved by everyone. Our darling baby is kicking up a storm in my belly and Hubby has been able to feel it more and more which is really exciting for him too, although baby alwasy gets shy when people are around and put their hand on my belly.

Thankfully even though we are very busy, everything we have been doing has been so much fun and even though a weekend at home would be very welcome, there are so many exicting things in the pipeline for the rest of the year that I am sure the next trimester will be going just as fast as the last one and soon we will be welcoming our 1st child into the world.

But till then here are a few photo’s of my growing bump and our beautiful child (for those who are interested).

Sean and I took a little road trip through New South Wales to do a bit of camping and sight-seeing. These are a few (late) posts telling the story of our trip.

We decided to leave early the next morning to avoid the relentless heat but by 8am it was already over 20deg and the sun was streaming into the car, needless to say a lot of sunscreen was worn. For most of the trip to Wentworth, our first stop for the day, all we saw was the horizon which was just breath-taking. It’s hard to actually describe how open and free it is until you see it but I thought it was amazing and SO beautiful!

Our 1st stop was Wentworth where we saw the place where the Darling and Murray River meet. The one river was so clear and the other so dirty that you could see the difference immediately.

It was a lovely little town that even had a small statuette in the centre of a tractor to commemorate the Massey tractors that help protect the town during the 1959 flood.

We also paid a quick visit to the Old Goal, but it was closed so we just paid a visit to the little antique store which had been converted from the old offices attached to the goal.

Our next stop was onto Mildurra where the 1st inland irrigation system was installed by the Chaffey bothers who had come over from America. It has a dry arid area and Oasis surrounded by vineyards and fruit orchards. We did a bit of sight-seeing including the original homestead of the Chaffey brothers.

We were going to camp in a small town called Balandrad but had made such great time that we decided to have lunch in a lovely little park and keep going to Hay where we stayed at the showground. The whole area is very dry and reminded me of a showground in the Karoo. We spent the evening sitting under peppercorn trees watching a very beautiful sunset.

Sean and I took a little road trip through New South Wales to do a bit of camping and sight-seeing. These are a few (late) posts telling the story of our trip.

Day 2 took us from Lake Keepit onto Dubbo. We wanted to set off early in the morning but due to a very bad sleep thanks to a deflated air-mattress situation we ended up leaving much later than we wanted to.

The Gunnedah Rural Museum

But it did mean we got to stop off at Gunnadah Rural Museum.It has a beautiful collection of everything rural and old from old cars and guns to restored tractors and farm equipment.

From there our next stop was gorgeous Dubbo, such a lovely, quaint town. We got the chance to visit the old Dubbo Goal, where we learnt all about some of the famous criminals of the past and a very different hangman called Nosey Bob, who lost his nose when a horse kicked him it the face!

At the Dubbo Goal

That night we stayed at one of my favourite campsites of the trip called Tandara. It had 2 old railway carriages on-site, a pool and some showers. It was in such a small town where there was only one pub, one main street and such gorgeous picturesque views. It reminded me of Aberdeen in the Karoo where my Grandparents are from, but not quite as dry as Aberdeen though but just as beautiful.

It’s a beautiful spot, with lovely benches under a tarp in the shape of a ship, the garden listed all the convicts and guards who were on the 1st eleven ships to arrive in Australia.

Then onto Tamworth we went, it wasn’t quite what I expected. I was hoping to see a cowboy or two and hear a whole bunch of Country & Western music everywhere but Sean said nothing really happened there till the big C&W festival at the end of January. Which leads me onto my secret confession, I LOVE Country & Western music!!! So I was heavily disappointed that:

We didn’t see any cowboys

We heard hardly any C&W music

No one rode around on horses

But it was great seeing the huge Golden Guitar and taking a tour of the wax museum hosting all the famous C&W stars from Australia.

We then went on to our first campsite for the night at Lake Keepit, a beautiful site alongside the lake. It was very well maintained and we stayed in an area called “bush-camping” because there were no showers on site but it was a lovely spot and a great evening for our first night of camping.

p.s. I decided to take a photo of the sunset every evening to remember the beauty we experienced along the way, so each post should have sunset photo.